Mason Crafton's Arc

Chapter 12 of 15

Mason ran downhill through the laurel with the earring in a fist. Behind, the Henderson woman's voice climbed toward the tower platform. Ahead, the trees thinned into the open ground above the birdbath. If the princess heard the call before Mason reached her flock, the jewel birds would rise and the dragon would come down. Mason had one chance left. Steal a bird before the tower answered. The path cut past the old lookout on its tall wooden legs. Mason saw a small orange puppy tied at the base of the ladder, ears up, tail flicking. Bait, or a gift left for the princess. Mason cut the rope with the knife and shoved the puppy uphill toward the shelter path. It yipped once and ran. Good. A moving noise in the wrong direction. Mason kept going. Below the tower, a doe and her fawn broke from the brush and bolted across the slope. They had heard the Henderson woman too. Mason followed the line they cut, staying in their dust, and reached the low pines above the birdbath. Three jewel birds sat on the rim of the stone bowl. No sign yet of the flock rising. The princess had not answered. Mason emptied the honey pot from the shelter into a strip of linen and laid it flat on a flat stone six paces from the bowl. The birds saw the shine and the smell together. Two lifted, circled, and dropped onto the linen. Mason waited for the third. It came. Mason brought a folded coat down on all three at once and pinned them. Two got free. One did not. Mason held the bird in one hand and the earring in the other. The Henderson woman was still shouting up at the tower, but the tower window had not opened. The old bell-trap below the platform sat quiet in the grass, its cable cut weeks ago. No one up there had heard her yet through the shutters. Mason tied the earring into the bird's foot-band with a strip of cape thread, whispered the three words into its feathers, and let it go. The bird climbed straight up the mountain face. A shutter banged open above. The princess leaned out over the rope rail of her platform, hair loose, staring at the bird already past her reach. She shouted. The rest of her flock burst from the tower eaves and chased, but the jewel bird was small and high and gone. Down on the path, the bearded man broke from the trees and saw Mason at the bowl. He ran at Mason with a length of firewood raised. Mason did not fight. Mason turned and ran uphill along the deer track. The man was older and the slope was steep. By the second bend Mason was alone in the pines. The dragon would answer the earring, or it would not. Mason had spent the last card. The Hendersons had reached the tower too late to stop the send, and the princess had seen her own jewel leave her hand. Mason kept climbing toward the summit to meet whatever came down.